More than that--earnestness and reality are classed
together under the head of "bad form," the vital word grates on the
emasculate brain of the society man, and he compensates himself for his
inward consciousness of inferiority by assuming easy airs of insolence.
A very brilliant man was once talking in a company which included
several of the superfine division; he was witty, vivid, genial, full of
knowledge and tact; but he had one dreadful habit--he always said what
he thought. The brilliant man left the company, and one sham-languid
person said to a sham-aristocratic person, "Who is that?" "Ah, he's a
species of over-educated savage!" Now the gentleman who propounded this
pleasant piece of criticism was, according to trustworthy history, the
meanest, most useless, and most despicable man of his set; yet he could
venture to assume haughty airs towards a man whose shoes he was not fit
to black, and he could assume those airs on the strength of his slangy
impassivity--his "good form." When we remember that this same fictitious
indifference characterized the typical _grand seigneur_ of old France,
and when we also remember that indifference may be rapidly transformed
into insolence, and insolence into cruelty, we may well look grave at
the symptoms which we can watch around us.
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